censes," and "Anaticulæ pisochumizenses?" Apart from the difficulty of recognising thus disguised lamb cutlets, spring chicken, ducks and green peas, the Greek and Latin terms were barbarously mixed-an offence to the scholar as great as that to the gourmet if you mixed his port and sherry in one decanter. Moreover, they called their menu "Scheda Prandii ;" whereas prandium is not dinner at all, but a light matutinal snack.

I have already said a word or two as to the difficult art of dinner-talk: reverting thereto, I may remark that aristological anecdote may fairly be introduced now and then. Nor surely is it infra dignitatem to talk of wines and their culture, or to quote the gastronomic fancies of poets and humorists-Thackeray on bouillabaisse, Sala on caviar, Father Prout on eggs. You may relate how Baron Brisse indignantly rebuked the ignorant person who declared that mayonnaise was spelt with yen, observing that he talked of two distinct sauces-as in a mayennaise there is velouté, which does not occur in a mayonnaise. You may recall the palatal delicacy of the Count du Broussin, who could taste the mule's hoof in an omelette aux champignons. Mushrooms, be it known, are only perfect when crushed by the foot of a mule. You may tell of the terror of an Italian prince crossing the Alps with his people, when a mule and its rider fell over a precipice. "The cook!" he exclaimed. "Holy Virgin, is it the cook?" "It is Don Prosdocimo, your excellency." 'Only the chaplain : ah, the saints be praised!" If you are pathetic, there is the melancholy suicide of Vatel to narrate; if aphoristic, the aristologists of old have many a

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lucid laconism at your service. Here is one: "It is a popular error to say that where there is dinner for two, there is dinner enough for three; it ought to be, Where there is dinner for three, there is perhaps enough for two." With which wise saying I end my desultory paper, wishing the courteous reader good dinners and a healthy appetite thereto.

"Un poème jamais ne valut un dîner :"

how much less an essay !

VOL. I.

AN ESSAY ON EPIGRAMS.

PROFESSOR SYLVESTER, well known as a brilliant discoverer in the fashionable branch of modern mathematics, has just published a brochure on The Laws of Verse, which is curious as exemplifying what a great wit called “ultracrepidarianism." Mr. Sylvester is an apostle of L'Église Invariantive, and has got into his head the notion that poetry can be produced by algebraic processes. It will be remembered by all who have read Sydney Smith's delightful Lectures on Moral Philosophy (which, by the way, Lord Jeffrey recommended him not to publish), that he maintained the theory that wit can be studied and perfected just as mathematics can. Wit, argued the facetious canon, results from surprise; and to prepare such surprise is merely a question of ingenuity. The feeling produced on the mind by an original witticism when first heard is not unlike that which is caused by a clever bit of prestidigitation or a startling chemical experiment. Water quenches fire: the tiro in chemistry who for the first time sees a solid substance ignite on touching water, and swim in flame on its surface, feels

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precisely the same kind of pleasure as that which is produced by Crashaw's famous epigram on the miracle of Cana

"Nympha pudica Deum vidit, et erubuit."

A similar effect is obtained by other forms of ingenious surprise-by a clever problem in chess or in geometry, for example. Suppose it required to describe an equilateral triangle with an angular point on the periphery of each of three concentric circles, "every schoolboy," as Lord Macaulay would say, ought to be able to do it. Take your compasses, O ingenuous youth fresh from Middlemist, and draw radius o c. Make OCP two-thirds of a right angle. To circle whose radius is o A apply A P equal to OB: draw CA, CB, AB, making ACP equal to OCB; then A B C is your triangle. Or take this charming three-move chess problem by Meyer, which I set down in continental notation :

Let any fair lady who does me the honour to read these lines, and who disdains not the chess-board, ascertain for herself whether such a problem is not a species of epigram.

Now, although mathematics, which is the scaffolding or skeleton of the vast edifice of thought, has some kinship with both poetry and wit, I take it that Sydney Smith and Professor Sylvester are alike wrong in supposing that

it is easy to pass from the realm of figures to that of letters. The learned Professor appears to think that mathematical ideas are of universal application; he maintains that "music is the algebra of sense, algebra the music of the reason." This oracular saying is too hard for me, and might indeed be a tough nut for Edipus himself to crack; but I quote it for the benefit of those who love to dive into profundities of thought. However, the fallacy which lurks in such theories as Mr. Sylvester's is, that the theorist assumes cognate results always to proceed from cognate causes. A problem in geometry or chess, the brilliant display of a chemist or a conjuror, Pepper's ghost, or Home's floatation near the ceiling, may cause a feeling of pleasant surprise akin to that produced by a clever epigram; but it does not therefore follow that an epigrammatist can play chess, or a mathematician do juggling tricks. Professor Sylvester arranges the Alcaic stanza of our dear lyrist Horace in a square matrix, such as he applies to determinants; and then he argues that the Epicurean poet had a highly mathematical turn of mind. "Had Athens been Cambridge, and Orbilius Colenso (whose private pupil at the University I was long before the far-famed Luke was heard of), I have little doubt that Horace might have come out the Numa Hartog or Pendlebury of his year." Mathematicians are notably bad hands at logic, and this is about as complete a non sequitur as was ever devised. Horace got his metre and a good many of his ideas from Alcæus, and did not dream of the subtle arithmetical arrangement ascribed to him.

Still, there are certain departments of literature in